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Google Ventures Has Much More Money to Give Away

Google (News - Alert) Ventures is going to have a lot more money to back worthy ventures with news this week that its annual allocations will jump to $300 million from $200 million.

That also means Google Ventures will be able to afford to participate in more late-stage investment rounds, which often require investors to hand over tens of millions of dollars, Reuters reported.

In the past, Google Ventures has invested in 40-50 seed-stage companies each year by providing them no more than $250,000. It also invests no more than $10 million in about a dozen companies per year. Just one or two companies a year got between $20 and $50 million.

Google Ventures has been unique in that its teams work with companies on design, marketing, engineering and recruiting efforts, the company said. It also provides a Startup Lab.

Google Ventures invests in diverse sectors, such as medicine with Foundation Medicine, or smart grids with Silver Spring Networks.

Now, there is more money in the treasure chest.

There are hints that the allocation amount per year could go even higher, as well.

Google’s announcement was tweeted on Thursday just as it started a meeting with 100 of its funded startups, according to BizJournals.com.

In a related matter, earlier this year TechZone360 reported that Google Ventures seems to have a preference for investing in big data. For example, Google Venture partner Karim Faris is an investor in CloudStory Data.

"The big data market is a large and fast-growing opportunity where the key challenge will be the ability for businesses to leverage publicly available data on the Web and bring it together with a company's own internal data seamlessly," Faris said in a recent statement carried by TechZone360.